This month, several dental industry leaders spoke with Becker's about the most pressing issues and trends in the field, including saliva testing, DSO consolidation and employee burnout.
Here are is what 10 dental leaders told us in May:
The biggest growth goals for 4 DSO execs for the rest of 2024
Phil Cassis. Co-Founder and CEO of Providence Dental Partners (Atlanta): We are focused on smart growth, internally and externally. While we are always looking to grow by partnering with like-minded practices, we are also focused internally on the growth of our dental professionals. We continue to invest significantly in the training and development of our team to enhance clinical skills, improve patient experience, and operate more efficiently. That's part of brand identity and aligns to our business outlook. Investing in the growth of our teams is something we are focused on for 2024 and beyond.
Why 11 dental leaders are focusing on culture, staffing and leadership
Carrington Morgan. Vice President of Human Capital Management of Great Lakes Dental Partners (Chicago): My main focus for the second half of 2024 is to achieve excellence in recruiting and retaining quality providers. We aim to attract and retain top talent by implementing effective recruitment strategies, comprehensive onboarding programs and continuing to be competitive and creative with compensation packages. Additionally, my team will actively work on increasing awareness around our brand, promoting our company culture and showcasing our unique value proposition to potential candidates. Furthermore, we will continue to expand on our rewards, recognition and wellbeing programs for employees, ensuring their satisfaction and engagement. By prioritizing these goals, we aim to strengthen our workforce, enhance employee retention and build a positive employer brand in the industry.
The Smilist's roadmap for 50% growth in 2024
Andrew Mintz. CEO of The Smilist (Great Neck, N.Y.): I have my eyes on the integration of dental and medical health. I'm fascinated with those connections and ways for us to create opportunities to improve the overall health of patients. For example, we don't manage cardiac disease, but we take care of patients with cardiac disease, so where is that connection between cardiovascular problems and oral health? How are they connected and what is it that we can do about that? I think that there are more and more DSOs that are keeping track of that or are actively involved in managing some of that. So from my perspective as I look forward, I believe that there are going to be opportunities for us to be collaborating with physicians, and health plans for us to be involved in that overall better health.
How 1 dental practice owner combats burnout
Taylor Sutton, DMD. Practice Owner at Aspen Dental (Chicago): I've always had a really big sports background. I was always the captain of my team from little league all through college, and I've always tried to take a captain mentality more so than being the boss of a staff because the captain of any sports team really tries to resonate with their players, with their teammates, to connect on a more personal level. Ultimately, a team is going to succeed and have a championship performance when everybody's really on the same page and understanding of one another. Also, one of the most important details of being the captain of the team is knowing every player on your team, or every employee on your team, all have different personalities and walks of life and backgrounds. So people are going to respond to stressors differently. People are going to respond to different coaching moments differently, so being able to identify how people react and respond to certain things is one of the most underrated qualities of a captain or of a leader, to really connect with different people in different ways and ultimately meshing all of those different personalities together to form one unified team.
How 1 new DSO will prioritize value to fuel growth
Adam Richichi. CEO of Archway Dental Partners (Danbury, Conn.): We have been on a responsible growth pattern over the last seven or eight years since I took the helm as CEO back in 2017 of making sure we're making smart partnerships and smart integrations with the right kind of practices, not just going out to buy and integrate just to buy and integrate. That means we don't grow as fast as some of our peers, but we make smart decisions and we make sure that if we're going to add a practice to our portfolio, that means we are going to add value to them and they're going to add value to us. If we can't do those two things, we don't do it. So yes, we've been able to identify great partner and affiliate practices across both general dentistry and specialty care over the years. Over the last year, I'd say we've probably been the most acquisitive. We've acquired five practices so far this year with a good seven to 10 ahead of us in our pipeline ... We take great pride in how we go through that integration process, which slows us down appropriately, as it should.
How 1 new DSO plans to grow in a challenging economy
Will MacInnis. Co-CEO of Cliff Ridge Specialty Partners (San Francisco): We're very lucky to have entered the market when we did. We actually raised our funds amid a high-interest rate environment and are looking to over-equitize in our first couple of deals. The key difference between us and the way our competitors have been financing deals is we're not looking to max out leverage when it comes to funding deals. This has happened elsewhere throughout healthcare for many years, but people oftentimes like to push the envelope on taking on as much leverage as possible and it's times like this when interest rates change that it comes back to bite people. So we're looking to take a more balanced approach to investing and putting in as much equity as we feel is the right amount. And using debt but not in an aggressive way.
How VideaHealth, Heartland Dental completed the largest dental AI rollout
Tim Quirt, DDS. Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations for Heartland Dental (Effingham, Ill.): One of the greatest gifts we can give as a doctor is patient acceptance of treatment. We diagnose and treatment plan with the goal of improving our patients' health. That's one of the greatest things AI has enabled our supported doctors to do — reinforce their diagnostic philosophy and accuracy while enhancing patient case acceptance. It's not necessarily about trying to make a doctor feel bad that they potentially might have missed something in the past. Ultimately, are we giving our patients the best care we possibly can? This is just light years ahead of anything we've had in the past. Yes, you will find areas that you potentially would've missed in the past, but what you're also doing is being able to communicate with a patient any type of issue they may or may not have very clearly that they're now saying, "I see it, and yes, I should take action on that," and that's one of the best things.
Why PDS Health is leading the charge for medical-dental integration
Stephen E. Thorne IV. Founder and CEO of PDS Health (Henderson, Nev.): For over a decade, we have been studying the market and scientific research showing that oral health means better overall health. It's abundantly clear that oral healthcare providers can have a massive impact on people's overall health. Oral healthcare providers are perfectly and uniquely positioned to be a conduit, if not the primary conduit, for general health. The longstanding separation of dentistry from primary care healthcare is crazy, in my opinion, considering the mouth is connected to the rest of the body and is the gateway to so much of our overall health. We've been studying and working on this issue, trying to figure out how to make it all work, and after over a decade, we finally made the decision to make this transition and lead a very necessary change in healthcare. Looking ahead, we envision local primary care facilities where medical and dental providers work together to help patients be healthier and happier.
The parts of dentistry that 8 leaders say need an update
Ronald Perry, DDS. Associate Dentist at Dentistry by Design (Boston): One area ripe for innovation within the dental industry lies in modernizing the process of taking dental impressions, traditionally conducted with cumbersome putty-like materials. These antiquated methods often lead to patient discomfort, along with messy and time-consuming procedures. Enter digital impression technology, a contemporary solution employing intraoral scanners to capture precise 3D images of the patient's teeth and gums. This cutting-edge approach boasts an array of benefits, such as heightened patient comfort, expedited turnaround times, and seamless digital storage and transmission of impressions for future reference. Although many dental practices have embraced digital impression technology, there remains ample opportunity for advancement, particularly in enhancing affordability and accessibility for smaller practices. Moreover, ongoing advancements in software and hardware hold the promise of further optimizing the capabilities and efficiency of digital impression systems. In essence, transitioning from traditional dental impressions to digital alternatives stands to significantly elevate the patient experience while streamlining workflows throughout the dental industry.
The 'black hole' in healthcare dentistry can fill
Daniel Weinstein. Co-founder and CEO of Lura Health: When we started the company in 2017, it was known that saliva was useful, and I think the first tests that everybody really knew about were genetic testing. Then it evolved to drugs of abuse testing, so testing for more forensics. COVID-19 hit and there started being FDA approvals for COVID-19 within saliva instead of a prick or a nasal swab or something like that. Now, it's completely taken off. You have companies spinning off left and right that are making new use cases for saliva testing. It really seems like it's going to be the thing that catalyzes and accelerates dentistry's true integration with real health monitoring. I really believe, and I think almost every other thought leader believes this as well, that the thing dentists really have going for them to catalyze this integration with healthcare is the fact that they have access to one of the most valuable fluids in health monitoring.